I was driving my car making an exit off the freeway & as I looked over my shoulder too make sure it was safe to merge over I seen there was smoke coming out of the tailpipe I went to turn back around & smoke was also coming from the sides of the steering wheel , I went too put my eyes back on the road & the whole front end of the car was on fire .
Pontiac Firebird fire or smoke problems
19 of the 493 owner complaints about the Pontiac Firebird describe fire, smoke or burning smell, most of them for the 1995 model year.
- owner complaints
- 19
- worst model year
- 1995
- typical mileage
- 60,000
Is there a fix? No recall or service bulletin covers this area of the car yet.
By model year
Often reported together
What owners say
The turning signal light sockets on the 1997 firebird (and probably other model years) burn up after a time causing signal failure and marker light failure. The cause is the excessive heat given off by the daytime running lights. Pontiac used the turning signal element of the light assembly as a full on,all the time, visibility light for daytime driving. I love the idea for safety reasons but I feel the signal socket needs to be better able to handle the heat of these lights being on all the time. Visibility is great but having these sockets fail at busy intersections and not being able to signal seems to be a bigger safety issue and an accident waiting to happen. The sockets burn black and haven't caught on fire on my car and I'm not sure of the fire potential of this, but being that the bumper fenders and virtually most of the car is plastic, if they ever did catch fire I'd hate to see how fast the vehicle would burn!. I have had to resort to using a small jumper wire to ground the drl signal out so that I effectively disabled the lights so that I didn't have to continually have to repair the sockets or risk having a fire. The next question asks for a date of incident and I'm not sure how to answer so I'll put today's date in there. The sockets seem to burn out once every few years, even the replacements are prone to failure after a couple years. My sockets have been replaced twice in 134,000 miles and this third set of sockets are scorched after being replace six months ago so I disabled the drl before they got worse.
The car engine caught on fire is the major thing, but also you could always hear noises from the wheels got them inspected twice and the people said nothing was wrong.
1995 pontiac firebird wiring harness caught on fire while driving.*mr the fire caused minor damage to the vehicle.
While driving at 65 MPH flames were coming from vehicle. Dealer notified. *ak *ts
Electrical power trunk and convertible top. The vehicle caught on fire. It was determined the fire started in the trunk. The housing over the convertible top had burned up. The vehicle was totaled.
Parked car in attached garage. Went into home. After several minutes heard noise in garage and opened door from home to garage to investigate. Entire front half of car was on fire. Ensuing fire consumed entire car, garage, and house. Fire marshal stated failure was with engine fuel line.
Consumer got into car and smelled smoke. After looking around, found that smoke was coming from under seat where there was a fire. Ran back into store to get some water to put it out. After about 15 minutes the fire was out. The seat motor caught fire.
The consumer had just parked the vehicle when he noticed flames shooting from under the hood. Lifted hood & noticed fluid dripping from hose (hot air hose below fuel line) was in flames. Put the flames out. The engine was burnt .recall 93v199000.
While driving the vehicle started losing power and vehicle stalled. Pulled over and raised the hood, and saw flames coming from the engine. A nearby driver helped to extinguish the fire. The cause of the fire remains unknown. The manufacturer has not been contacted.
Related recalls
No recalls on record for this model year.
Questions about the Pontiac Firebird fire or smoke
Which Pontiac Firebird years have fire, smoke or burning smell problems?
The model years with the most reports are 1995 (7 complaints), 1994 (5 complaints) and 1997 (3 complaints).
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